Some bits in the mosaic of our time are overlooked because we look for boulders. This column presents issues that might deserve attention.
 
1. Carefully cultivated myopia. May 6, 2008. A surprising sentence in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung – it is rated as a conservative organ – catches the eye. The critical words: while there can “hardly be a doubt” regarding the flow of weapons from Iran to Iraq, it is “unclear whether official government policy, or the regionally customary trafficking with arms” is the cause. Now then, it is common knowledge that Iran’s government is able to control who wears what, how people entertain and who meets with whom. Therefore, is it likely that the transfer of advanced armament in great quantity could escape the attention of rulers that monitor and direct everything?
 
2. May 5. As was to be expected, Iran has just refused to entertain the proposals the SecCouncil 5 plus Germany have made to it. The package offered Iran in the technological and political realm everything it might have needed in exchange for a halt of the uranium enrichment process. Let us assume that Iran, conforming to its claims, would be interested in nuclear power generation only. In this case, the renunciation of the military project that she allegedly does not pursue, as part of a generous deal supporting the civilian endeavor, should have been a hard-to-refuse offer. Rejecting the deal suggests that the Mullahs’ priority is not plain vanilla nuclear-generated electricity. Obviously, the régime considers this other aim to be of higher value than what the Six were willing to give. Not only that, the accepted price to be paid that follows from the refusal is considerable. Therefore, the implications regarding the true nature of Iran’s striving are clear. Equally obvious is that Iran’s rulers overestimate their strength. At the same time they underestimate the sincerity of the warnings and the power of the opponents of their nuclear armament plans.
 
3. In the future Iran is likely to succeed in acquiring the bomb. If so, we will become the beneficiaries of a valuable lesson. It will teach us about how diplomacy can be abused if the smart trickster and the myopic that consents to being duped cooperate. The example will also illustrate how diplomacy can degenerate into a political instrument in a war that is initially carried out “by other means.”
 
4. May 1. News of hideous acts has become “normal” through the misdeeds of the Jihadists. This time a wedding’s participants were decimated. The terrorists do not limit themselves to military targets but concentrate on the everyday activities of a functioning society. One reason is that soft targets happen to be low-risk targets. More significant in explaining the pattern might be the intention to paralyze society. People playing ball, attending wedding, participating in funerals, visiting friends are all activities that the fanatics do not control. They also suggest that their partakers have other things in mind than the ones the zealots approve of. The implications, should the Islamists prevail, are obvious. If these totalitarians capture state power, they will use it to interfere in all functions of society to create the new kind of community and the matching “new man” their creed prescribes. This tells that by submitting, Iraqis will not escape terror. Only the form of its application, but not its extent and brutality, will change to correspond to the new situation.
 
5. What do terrorists do? They practice their profession, which is frequently also the only skill they have. They practice terror not because they are victims but because their program and values require it as a principle. Released terrorists are not converted while held. They are also immune against “rehabilitation”. That is why, once “outside” they continue their interrupted activity. Therefore, releasing terrorists means indirectly killing people.
 
6. There exists a dangerous error clouding the perception of terrorism. It results from the projection of the observers’ values upon the product of a different tradition. It is fashionable to assume that violence, as an instrument of governing, is the result of desperation rooted in a concrete situation. This assumed condition implies that needed change is impossible without violence because those in power defend their interests with brutal force. In many instances, it might be true that the lack of democracy necessitates violence against a system dedicated to oppression. In the case of modern terrorism, this does not apply. In its case, violence is not the only means left by tyranny. To the perpetrators terror is divorced from the nature of their opponent and is rated as an act demonstrating the high ethical standards of those practicing it. Therefore, terrorism is not a last resort of the desperate but the first choice of the virtuous.
 
7. Not without a motive, some like to misinterpret what tolerance entails. Tolerance is due for the airing of ideas. This tolerance is confused with lenience to be toward those that demand immunity for the advocacy and execution of crimes they tag as political statements.
 
8. May 1st is behind us. It seemed that the marching professional proletarians, often in well paying government jobs, wished back the good bad old days of the past. At that time, one had an enemy one could sell to the masses. In the old days, Average Joe knew that the class struggle is a clash between social classes conducted by one participant to exploit and by the other to expropriate. Nowadays, the fiercest struggle folks can think of is the morning race to grab a good spot at the beach of the resort where they vacation. The flags and the slogans displayed by demonstrators who came for the sausages and the beer to follow the official part, were revealing. Among the marchers there were the Young Socialist – the die-hard adherents of old Stalinism they know little about and which is now marketed under another label. Nor was the “Black Block” missing. The members are officially anarchists but seem to care mainly for an excuse to trash the venue – as long as the resistance is coddly and the consequences are guaranteed to be negligible. Foreign “revolutionary” and “liberation” organizations added color to the march. So did the peace flags carried by people who were not bothered by their Che Guevara T-shirted fellow marchers’ admiration of violence. The peaceniks’ outrage was rather directed against the desire of civilized society to defend itself against local subversives and international aggression. To complete the contradiction add speakers from the democratic socialists. Although represented in legislatures they try to sound radical against “oppression”. Oppression in this case is equated with political resistance to their program. Ritually they demand raises for all those who think themselves underpaid and call for world peace. What does it matter that the concluding act of the ritual includes a riot? This final act resists careful observation because the hour of the radical fun seekers dawns only when it gets dark. That is the time for attacks on the police while burning cars provide light and a photogenic background.
 
9. 1968 is celebrated by its participants as the year of rebellion. The year of contradiction would be a better, albeit less celebratory term. The year’s protest had an Eastern (Soviet Block) and Western version. Skinny dipping and free weed with loud music was only typical of the West’s ’68. That made the “revolution” into an “event” of studied misbehavior carried out against angered parents, intimidated teachers and shredded city ordnances. In this the participants were opposed by a democratic state limited by its means and will to counter when the “movement” deigned to punch. Disobedience in the East meant standing up against a totalitarian state system. It was one that has repeatedly demonstrated (1953, 1956) its available means of repression and the unhesitant will to apply them. A connecting link between East and West is that the desire to smash all traditions and norms recall Mao’s Red Guards. At the same time, the movement in the West also departs of its admired Cultural Revolution. Between Berkeley and Berlin (only West!) not the Leader ordered what the “moved” had to disobey obediently but the participants themselves.
 
10. Populism is becoming a much used, and accordingly much abused term. It is especially popular with leftists. This crowd likes to call everyone that threatens to best them in the field of mobilization a “populist”. Whenever the “masses” in whose name leftists claim to act fail to follow, it is the populists that are blamed. Indeed, there is an unfolding counter-offensive against the left. It slams the ball hard as it returns the spiked serves that until now the left alone was allowed to use. In this sense the charge of populism is an attempt to defend a till now safe high ground. The problem with the term is that it is used to insinuate that everybody who is popular and rattles the brittle bunker of the left is guilty of populist rabble rousing. Something is easily forgotten here. Not those that win elections by articulating the silent-treated problems perceived by the public as pressing are the salesmen political snake oil.